Design
Sidewalk Labs’ Neighborhood of the Future in Toronto Is Getting Closer
The new draft plan for the “smart” waterfront development offers broad proposals for housing, transportation, and energy use. But it’s not that radical.
Sidewalk Toronto shared more details on Thursday about plans for the 12 acres of publicly owned land in downtown Toronto where a controversial neighborhood of the future is set to be built “from the internet up.”
For better or worse, though, the model of urban development put forth by Sidewalk Toronto—a public-private entity formed between Sidewalk Labs (the city-building subsidiary of Alphabet, Google’s parent company) and the government-appointed nonprofit development corporation Waterfront Toronto—may be more in keeping with contemporary principles of good urban planning than it is visionary.